So, on the short list for Secretary of the Treasury is a guy named Larry Summers. He’s had the job before, under Bill Clinton, and since then, he served as the President of Harvard. He’s a pretty smart guy, and I really don’t have any problem with him serving on the Obama’s economic transition team.
But if Obama names him to the cabinent, it will mark the first time that I am offically disgusted with the president-elect. I know that it won’t be the last time, but I was hoping to forestall the inevitable JUST a bit.
Why do I dislike Summers so much? Mainly, it’s the remarks he made about women’s innate ability to do math and science. But this one’s a gem, too. Does he have to be right on gender issues to manage the economy? No, probably not. But surely if he had said these things about another group, these sorts of remarks would be waaaaay beyond the pale? And the remarks about Africa being UNDER-polluted? Seriously?
Please, dear god, pick someone else. The feminist blogs are going to go nuts if this guy gets a seat at the table for the next four years.
4 responses so far ↓
Jenn // November 10, 2008 at 6:48 am
I have to admit… I’m not convinced he’s a bad guy. The Africa memo was written by someone else, and the offensive part was a demonstrative ironic aside, not a policy he was actually advocating. I can’t disparage anyone for trying to be satirical.
The comments on men and women in faculty… I read the speech after he gave it, and the stuff that came out then, and I just re-read it now, and I don’t find it a persuasively anti-feminist or anti-woman speech. He offers three hypotheses, all drawn from papers on presentation at the conference he was attending, and he says he’s going to try and provoke the audience, and then that’s exactly what he does. But along the way, he recognizes first that what he thinks is the most important hypothesis — the one that should be studied and dealt with most immediately — is whether our society as a whole had played a role in making it possible and preferable for men to be able to choose to have a family while working 80 hours a week while women are hardly ever offered the same opportunity. Which… seems fairly reasonable to me. The intrinsic aptitude part of the speech — yeah, it’s provocative, but he takes pains to say he’s sure he’s wrong, he’s being unsubtle, etc., throughout the whole stretch. (And the leading commentary on the speech in the article you cite is from a woman who walked out of the session and so probably didn’t hear the entirety of the argument).
Everything I’ve read about Summers (check thislong form profile from when he was new to the job in 2004) makes him seem like a guy who has some big problems with political interaction but not as someone with bad intent in any of the areas that matter most to me. In fact, he seems sort of like… well, like someone Obama would pick, in the Emanuel vein of hard-charging super-smart folks who can get stuff done.
But maybe I’m missing something. I would like to know, because I’ve felt hesitant to engage in any of this debate so far, because I feel like I’m missing a big piece.
Kristen // November 10, 2008 at 6:55 am
I think the context of the comments about gender and science was part of the problem. Like, he came in a rehashed in a very un-eloquent way the prevailing arguments of the day without adding much to the discussion.
I’ll accept that I don’t have a clear view on this guy given the source on much of my information, but it seems to me that this might be one Clintonite he might do well to take a pass on, given the hard feelings some people harbor about the sexism of the primaries.
Jenn // November 10, 2008 at 10:58 pm
I am convinced he’s unconfirmable by the Senate for exactly these reasons, because, sadly, the Senate and politics and general have become a place where nuance is not invited. But if he really is the most brilliant economic mind on the left — which is how economists are talking about him — then it makes me sad to see him disqualified for the manner in which he speaks instead of the content of his actions, you know?
But the guy he mentored who’s the NY Fed chair is probably a good pick, too.
Kristen // November 18, 2008 at 12:49 am
SLATE has a good article supporting your point of view here: http://www.slate.com/id/2204597?wpisrc=newsletter